Using AI to Save Money, Time and Produce Better Work for Clients with Jared Correia

Main takeaways:

1. AI Adoption is Slow but Critical: Many lawyers are hesitant to use AI, yet adopting it early offers a significant competitive edge.
2. Workflow Enhancement: AI can optimize repetitive tasks such as drafting, summarizing, and client communication, saving time and reducing costs.
3. Future-Ready Mindset: Lawyers need to explore AI now to stay relevant and comply with evolving ethical requirements around tech competency.

AI is revolutionizing industries, but how can law firms leverage this technology effectively? In this episode of The Optimized Law Firm Podcast, Patrick Carver and guest Jarred Correia discuss the current state of AI adoption in the legal field and the untapped opportunities for small and solo law firms. Discover practical applications, overcome skepticism, and learn how AI can enhance efficiency, profitability, and client service. Don’t miss this insightful conversation!

Timestamps:

1. Understanding AI Adoption in Law
   Timestamp: 00:00:05 – 00:12:20
2. Practical Applications for AI in Small Firms
   Timestamp: 00:12:21 – 00:25:40
3. Ethics, Challenges, and Future of AI
   Timestamp: 00:25:41 – 00:32:30

Short on time? Watch these digestible videos instead:

1. Law Firm Content on Google’s Search Results: Changes with AI Search

“AI is a hot topic in legal tech, but many lawyers hesitate to embrace it. Why is that? In this clip, Patrick Carver and Jarred Correia explore the barriers to AI adoption in law firms and why overcoming them is crucial for staying competitive. Discover how you can start exploring AI today!”

2. Barriers of Ai Adoption and How To Stay Ahead

“Transform your law practice with AI! This segment reveals practical ways AI can streamline workflows, from drafting legal documents to managing client communication. Watch to learn how even free AI tools can save you time and money while boosting efficiency.”

3. Top 5 Practical Applications for AI in Small Firms

“What ethical considerations come with using AI in law? In this segment, Patrick and Jarred discuss evolving tech competency rules and the transformative potential of AI. Learn how to adopt AI responsibly and stay ahead in the legal industry.”

Transcription:

00:00:05:29 – 00:00:32:01

Patrick Carver

Okay. I’m here with the king himself. Mr. Jarred Correia, and we are pleased to be back with them again. Always have had a couple of great conversations. And so today I want to kind of pick your brain a little bit on first aid. We’ve talked about it a little bit before, I think maybe like six or nine months ago.

00:00:32:01 – 00:00:58:25

Patrick Carver

And I it’s just, you know, the changes have been coming so quickly that, you know, I think almost like on a daily basis, I’m seeing something new that I’m implementing in my own work and things like that. And so it seems to be everywhere. And what I’ve noticed from my point of view is that there’s been a lot of kind of add ons, superficial add ons that are not really super impactful.

00:00:58:25 – 00:01:20:04

Patrick Carver

You’ve probably seen it like in your in certain software and in different things like that. What, what do you think just kind of generally has changed over the past year with how lawyers understand A.I. or how how they’re using it? You know, just kind of broadly speaking, in those terms.

00:01:20:04 – 00:01:48:17

Jarred Correia

Yeah, it’s been an interesting year, man. I’ll tell you that. I found that like so I do a ton of presentations, as you know, and I probably do 200 a year, which is ridiculous. But like I, I have found that like 70% of what I talk about now is A.I., like it’s all anybody wants to talk about. But I think the two things that are interesting is not a lot of lawyers, especially like small firm lawyers, are actually using it.

00:01:48:19 – 00:02:06:09

Jarred Correia

Everybody want to talk about it. Everybody has strong opinions about it. But then I get in a room, I did a presentation and I for like a thousand attorneys the other day, and I’m like, who’s used they AI and they forehands go up like people aren’t even using like chat CBT or like Google Gemini or something like that, which is crazy to me.

00:02:06:09 – 00:02:25:08

Jarred Correia

So I think the biggest thing that I’ve noticed in the last year is like lawyers have to be more willing to like actually try this out and test it on their own because I think there’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action. And then the other thing is kind of what you mentioned, which is like everybody’s got an AI tool now, right?

00:02:25:10 – 00:02:48:26

Jarred Correia

Like, oh, we got our new AI system come by it. But a lot of it is trash and a lot of it is just like super basic functionality that now that’s not to say everybody. Like there are some companies in the space that are doing like really interesting things with A.I., like, you know, Thompson Reuters acquired co-counsel, which is built by case techs.

00:02:48:26 – 00:03:10:25

Jarred Correia

That’s a that’s a good product file mine, the case management software company. They’re releasing a lot of like deep AI tools. They’ve got a deposition tool that came out at their conference last month. That’s really good. Spell Book has this A.I. associate that they just released. So people are doing some deep stuff, but a lot of it is just like, you know, Hey, will summarize your data for you.

00:03:10:27 – 00:03:32:22

Jarred Correia

And the only pitch there is like, Oh, we’re ostensibly this legal company that’s going to protect your data better than Chartbeat. But yeah, and I think that’s I don’t have a problem with that necessarily. I’m glad people are utilizing these tools, but I think it’s it’s really early days and I am looking for more sophisticated use cases out of legal.

00:03:32:24 – 00:03:46:00

Jarred Correia

So I guess spinning that all back together, what I’m saying is like lawyers aren’t experimenting with AI as much as they could, but also there are a lot of simple tools, arrests like you reach the end of that functionality pretty quick.

00:03:46:03 – 00:04:04:22

Patrick Carver

Yeah, well, it seems like it was just like once that first came out, it was like a bomb and, you know, and it just like everybody was aware of it kind of knew about it. But then, yeah, I was aware of it too, but I didn’t really jump into it at first, you know, because I was just thinking, okay, this is so new.

00:04:04:22 – 00:04:25:08

Patrick Carver

I’m not I don’t really see it like a clear cut application. And then once I started actually playing around with it, it took me a little while and, you know, to kind of just figure out what it was, figure out like, which is see, Right. What I noticed when I started utilizing it was that I didn’t know how to use it.

00:04:25:10 – 00:04:42:00

Patrick Carver

You know, I would plug stuff into that, you know, charge GPP and I would get back maybe like a bad result, right? I would say something like write an article and then, you know, the article come back, comes back and it’s kind of trash. And you’re like, okay, well, I guess, you know, air is not for me sort of thing.

00:04:42:00 – 00:05:02:26

Patrick Carver

But the more I think and I’m guessing this is where a lot of lawyers are, is that, you know, they like maybe try it once kind of anecdotally or they see like the, you know, the summary thing inside, like their email. And it you know, it doesn’t really do a good job or something. And they’re like, okay, well, this is a I like I don’t really, you know, I’m not really going to invest time or energy into it.

00:05:02:26 – 00:05:41:17

Patrick Carver

But, you know, I I’m hopeful they will just I mean, it’s up for them. But like for me personally, once you kind of get going, there’s just so many kind of creative utilizations for it as far as build, you know, like building it into your workflow that I think, you know, I have to see. There’s a lot of applications for it with a lot of the like mundane stuff that, you know, lawyers are forced to do, whether it’s like reading, writing, you know, just stuff that you’re either giving you an assistant giving to a paralegal, it’s going to ultimately, you know, be able to be you can build a workflow around it, essentially.

00:05:41:20 – 00:06:06:00

Jarred Correia

Yeah, I think I think it’s a long game and it’s going to improve. And this is like the very earliest stages of consumers actually engaging with A.I. in a meaningful way. And it kind of had to be the chat bot because it’s a totally different experience to converse with the technology for most people than to be like, I’m making a search and I’m getting an output from it.

00:06:06:02 – 00:06:26:23

Jarred Correia

Yeah, So I think you’re making a lot of good points there. And I think if I’m a lawyer like so in most states they’ve updated the ethics rules at this point to include either common sex or comment to rule 1.1, which basically says an attorney to be competent, you need to understand the technology and stay abreast of technology developments.

00:06:26:25 – 00:06:46:13

Jarred Correia

And I think that last part becomes really important because the AI is going to get a whole lot better. And what you don’t want to do is say, well, this is this is not great, right now, so I’m done forever. This is not going away. So you need to understand how it works now and they need to follow the developments.

00:06:46:13 – 00:07:08:05

Jarred Correia

And I would be like if I was attorney, I would be really aggressive about utilizing this because you can remove a lot of the a lot of the work that you do and your staff does using an AI tool. And I like, I don’t think it’s going to be this way forever. Like, I don’t know that we need to talk about this today, but I think A.I. is coming for people’s jobs for sure.

00:07:08:07 – 00:07:23:08

Jarred Correia

But right now it’s but right now it’s in assistive technology. And if it can get you 80% of the way there, then that’s a timesaver. And if the expectation is the output is going to be perfect, that’s the wrong expectation.

00:07:23:11 – 00:07:46:09

Patrick Carver

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And and so, you know, kind of you answered the you know, the next point or question I was going to make is basically just talk about the opportunity, you know, for lawyers because it’s kind of like in this to the right around the beginning of the Internet itself. And it’s extremely powerful, but it’s in its infancy.

00:07:46:12 – 00:08:08:17

Patrick Carver

I can tell you personally, when we actually took it seriously and adopted this, we were able to reduce labor by about $10,000 per month. So just in our business. And so like, I think there’s I mean, what do you think about, you know, kind of those type of opportunities? I mean, you already kind of touched on it as far as coming forward for jobs.

00:08:08:17 – 00:08:22:04

Patrick Carver

But yeah, what do you see are like some of the practical kind of entry points where you know what’s going to become commonplace for, you know, the solo small attorney who’s maybe not utilizing it right now?

00:08:22:06 – 00:08:39:06

Jarred Correia

Yeah, I think the common for jobs things is is a way off. Like, I don’t know, like the technology is increasing at such a rapid pace. Like, I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m hoping we have like a decade or two left before we all have to start living in caves or whatever. I think the opportunity is massive in terms of cost savings.

00:08:39:08 – 00:09:01:18

Jarred Correia

Now, my aunt let me talk about two things. Like, the first thing is like if you think about the tasks that a lawyer does on a daily basis and even even the tacit staff do in a somewhat technology forward law firm, but not completely, like there’s a million different things that you could do with a AI, you can use it as a starting point for drafting content.

00:09:01:21 – 00:09:35:01

Jarred Correia

You can use it as a way to write correspondence to clients, get a first draft in place, right? You can use it to summarize case law or you can use it to develop a strategy. In a particular case, there’s just probably like 27, 30 different workflows you could think of off the top of your head. And the idea for me is that okay, if I’ve got this time that’s being spent on this project and I can reduce that time by 80%, 70% using A.I., there’s cost savings there and not just cost savings over your current team.

00:09:35:01 – 00:10:04:14

Jarred Correia

There’s a notion moving forward that if you are in a position where you can use A.I. for certain tasks and not people, you’re your staff load is going to be smaller, which means you’re saving costs that way as well. So you said you say, okay, in your business, when you start using AI like once per month, I think that’s like probably a low number for a lot of law firms, honestly, because a lot like every lawyer thinks they’re like a special snowflake.

00:10:04:14 – 00:10:27:13

Jarred Correia

Right? And we we do things the way that, like we have a special way of doing it. Like, no one else runs a personal injury law firm like we do. But guess what? Everybody runs their firm. I know the same way. And if you utilize A.I., you can save a bunch of time, I guess. You know, moving forward.

00:10:27:16 – 00:10:52:12

Jarred Correia

The interesting thing for me is that this technology is going to get more and more sophisticated. And if we’re talking about shaving time off like beat, that’s going to become incremental. So maybe it’s 70% now, but it’s 75% two years from now and it’s 85% three years from now. And maybe at some point you eliminate an entire set of tasks that people don’t have to do anymore.

00:10:52:15 – 00:11:12:14

Jarred Correia

But to the earlier conversation we were having, I think that only occurs when you’re in a position where you’re starting to use the technology right now and you ramp it up over time rather than trying to adopt it and ramp it up right away. I think A.I. is going to be the most transformative technology full stop like ever, not just for law firms.

00:11:12:14 – 00:11:35:27

Jarred Correia

And then the only thing, the last thing I would compare it to that had this much of an effect in terms of change in law practice would be the cloud, but it doesn’t even compare like cloud. It’s cloud services. Like they allowed people to work remotely. They allow you to swap data between software systems far more easily than you could previously like that was transformed if and especially when the pandemic hit, like it allowed people to work from home.

00:11:36:00 – 00:11:56:20

Jarred Correia

But hey, I’m going to have like 100 a thousand, 2000 times the impact that the cloud would have her offers. Now, the other thing I want to talk about briefly, it’s like one of the one of the problems with AI that lawyers bring up to me regularly. It’s like, okay, I bill hourly A.I. makes me work faster. I don’t make as much money.

00:11:56:22 – 00:12:22:20

Jarred Correia

And so there’s two solutions there. The first is now you have more work volume. I talked to lawyers about work volume all the time. So if without AI you can have 20 cases, you can prosecute with A.I., maybe your caseload goes up to 30 or 40. And in certain practice areas that’s really advantageous. Like if you’re billing hourly, okay, yeah, you’re going to be making the same amount of money in theory.

00:12:22:27 – 00:12:44:21

Jarred Correia

But if you’re a personal injury attorney, like you get more bites of the apple, you’re basically scratching more lottery tickets, which is over the course of time going to increase your revenue. But even if you’re an attorney who bills hourly like this is the time to start thinking about how can we use this technology to benefit me. And one of the ways you could do that is to potentially look at charging flat fees or alternative billing models.

00:12:44:23 – 00:13:02:05

Jarred Correia

The attorneys I work with who are flat fee attorneys, they make like 15 to 30% more than they would on hourly buying like across the board because you’re billing time of value. So a lot of times when attorneys think there’s this barrier to using, I it’s actually advantageous to them as they view it in the right way.

00:13:02:07 – 00:13:34:07

Patrick Carver

Yeah. No, I think everything you’re saying makes a ton of sense. I really like the point about just it being assistive in nature at this point because I don’t. I think the biggest thing with maybe, you know, utilizing this the right way is just perspective and mindset with it because. Right. If you you know, if you’re going in and I think the the items that get cited the most in the news are are like, oh, you know, this attorney was caught using AI and it made up cases, right?

00:13:34:08 – 00:13:36:17

Patrick Carver

Oh, yeah. And now we talk.

00:13:36:17 – 00:13:38:01

Jarred Correia

About hallucinations or.

00:13:38:01 – 00:14:00:19

Patrick Carver

Now, I don’t know, maybe like, I mean, basically, I think just that, you know, it can be kind of remedied or, you know, solved and everybody’s mind. But just like understanding that it’s not foolproof and it’s not going to, you know, completely write the brief for you. It’s not going to completely do the thing, but it can get you 80% there.

00:14:00:22 – 00:14:24:23

Patrick Carver

And, you know, and so there’s at least right now, there’s still that, you know, that manual kind of overview of of knowing whether or not it passes your your standards. But the other point, in addition to, you know, saving time, saving money is I would say one of the biggest benefits I’ve seen is just confidence level in the output, right?

00:14:24:23 – 00:14:48:13

Patrick Carver

The product, the work product. And, you know, just one of the ways that we utilize it is, you know, we had we were getting work done by you basically assistants. It was then flowing up to a manager who would review the work. And we’re on kind of this tight month, 30 day schedule where we have to have the deliverables and send them out to the clients.

00:14:48:13 – 00:15:14:02

Patrick Carver

And so what would happen is we would get, you know, 15 to 20 days in, they would send the work up and the managers like this is not anything like what I wanted, right? It’s so different. And and so it would go back down and then we’re stuck into this cycle of, okay, we’re doing all this work in September and so on and so on.

00:15:14:02 – 00:15:40:24

Patrick Carver

So like because we wanted to get, you know, a good product to go out. And so our overdue tasks have just plummeted substantially because we now can, you know, basically ensure with the eye that the work product meets rigid protocols or standards. Right? And so I think you can apply that with, you know, some of the applications I see.

00:15:40:24 – 00:16:13:08

Patrick Carver

Or, you know, no matter what you’re doing, it’s a you know, it’s some it’s somewhat of a formulaic process, right? If you’re doing these applications, if you’re doing, you know, motions, if you’re doing, you know, something that you can go and get every single motion you’ve ever created for some specific thing loaded in there. And I mean, it’s going to take a little tweaking and, you know, and so I think to your point, the people who kind of invest now and get acquainted with it now are going to really, you know, be able to leverage this in a big way moving forward.

00:16:13:10 – 00:16:37:10

Patrick Carver

You can put your next motion in it or essentially write it for you, knowing all of the characteristics, the traits, you know, to kind of match that like, you know, special way that you do it. So I think at least for me, that’s been a huge I don’t know it, you know, giving peace of mind makes makes me even even happier with the product we’re giving out.

00:16:37:10 – 00:16:38:29

Patrick Carver

You know, your headaches.

00:16:39:01 – 00:16:47:08

Jarred Correia

I love that. That’s a great way to look at it. Okay. Can we can I throw you a curveball? I know this is your choice, but.

00:16:47:13 – 00:16:49:25

Patrick Carver

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know.

00:16:49:27 – 00:17:17:27

Jarred Correia

This is like, right near wheelhouse, I think, and say I related. So what’s interesting to me is that Google recently came out with a core update, which is now rolled out in August, you know, really content focused. Yeah. Google’s also got a AI search results now at the top of the top of search is crazy and if you if you roll through that and you click on that, each of the links is to a piece of content.

00:17:18:00 – 00:17:32:19

Jarred Correia

And I’ve been experimenting with this. I’ve been searching for topics that law firms would write about, and law firm content is at the top of the page. So one of the things that’s interesting to me is there’s a little bit of a push and pull here because a lot of lawyers I talk to, they’re like, Oh, AI is great.

00:17:32:21 – 00:18:00:27

Jarred Correia

I can start drafting content for my website using AI, but all the push that Google is making is like, Hey, we want like high quality content in these areas that is useful for legal consumers or consumers in general. So what I find interesting is like if people are telling me like, Oh, I’m just going to crank out like a billion blog posts using Jackie Beattie, that can’t be the right strategy.

00:18:01:04 – 00:18:22:23

Jarred Correia

I feel like that like to the point we’re making before, that’s the obsessive part. And then you really got to flesh that out and make that high quality very, very. What are your thoughts on that? Because I’m interested in you as marketing person. Like, Yeah, how do you, how do you thread that needle just by one point. Look, Google’s like, let’s use API for everything.

00:18:22:25 – 00:18:29:25

Jarred Correia

But then they’re like, Oh, we need high quality content. That air is not going to necessarily produce without the right prompting on its own.

00:18:29:28 – 00:18:59:22

Patrick Carver

Yeah, So I would say over time, Google’s kind of always progressively tried to, you know, improve their results or like, you know, build their results in a way where it relies on, you know, mathematical or algorithmic criteria. Right? And so, yeah, you know, prior to this, you know, let’s go back ten, 20 years, and it was like, okay, we’re going to really we’re going to use link building, right?

00:18:59:22 – 00:19:28:15

Patrick Carver

Or we’re going to use keyword frequency. So just the number of times that you put, you know, criminal lawyer San Diego in and you could put it in White into it 800 times and you know, you would use Google. Right? And so they have kind of these imperfect measurements or like signals that, you know, they use to kind of understand if in fact, you know, this is this is quality.

00:19:28:15 – 00:19:50:26

Patrick Carver

Right. And so I think the thing that people get often wrong is, you know, I still hear people are like, well, I know you. You know, you’re the marketing guy. You’re going to go put the right keywords in and like, you know, and that’s a part of it. But I think you’ll see moving forward that, you know, they’re looking more holistically at at the business.

00:19:50:26 – 00:20:16:26

Patrick Carver

Basically things that you can’t kind of fake by one signal, Right? And so one signal for me would be like, you know, starting a website up, writing a thousand articles like we’ve done stuff like that to test it, not necessarily legal, but, you know, and what happens is, you know, if you don’t have Facebook presence, if you don’t have, you know, these other things that kind of give you the trappings of a real, you know, business, right?

00:20:16:26 – 00:20:44:08

Patrick Carver

Someone that, you know, basically authentication from multiple angles. Right? If you don’t have that, then it’s you know, you’re basically going to get quite it, right? You’re not going to get that that pop. Now, there are examples where, you know, people can, you know, kind of avoid that or like, you know, they’ve done that and, you know, and they get really good traffic and, you know, they basically ended the kind of affiliate SEO market.

00:20:44:11 – 00:20:46:10

Jarred Correia

Yeah, right.

00:20:46:13 – 00:21:07:05

Patrick Carver

So I think at some point or I think where it’s going to go is like and where we’re kind of thinking about it is what are those elements that can’t easily be done by everybody else. So what’s the like competitive moat? Right. And so, you know, you’ve seen part of that with, you know, people putting like this article written by Bob Jones.

00:21:07:05 – 00:21:31:00

Patrick Carver

JD in the new link to the the bio And so you’re having these like eat steak and oils and stuff like that. And so I heard, you know, basically, you know, part of maybe what they’re looking for is like, you know, content or things that don’t appear anywhere else on the Internet. So like first kind of first person material, right?

00:21:31:03 – 00:21:39:24

Patrick Carver

And things like that that haven’t, you know, that they can reference somewhere else. So I think I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know the answer. You know, at this point, I think it’s it’s like.

00:21:39:27 – 00:21:42:27

Jarred Correia

I don’t think I don’t think anybody does, by the way.

00:21:43:00 – 00:22:05:15

Patrick Carver

I don’t think Google’s figured it out either, because if they answer every question and, you know, it’s how they can’t serve ads, you know, And so it’s like that’s their, I would say, biggest cache cow. So it’s you know, I think it’s they’re going to have to find a balance between those things. Right. So I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes.

00:22:05:17 – 00:22:39:11

Patrick Carver

So. All right. So last question on the side and what do you think? You know, you mentioned some of these things already. What do you think are want to have kind of the, you know, lowest, lowest energy, highest reward things that average lawyer can do right now with a guy? Like what? What are a couple of, you know, just kind of clear cut applications for like, you know, the solo or, you know, small law firm that’s not, you know, not using like the real heavy deposition software, you know.

00:22:39:13 – 00:23:02:04

Jarred Correia

Who hasn’t like, bought into something. Yeah. So if you’re using, like the free tools, let’s start there. Yeah. So probably like, there’s some discussion about this, but I probably avoid like confidential data going into those tools at this point. If I’m using like free chat, CBT or something like that. So one use case I see a lot is workflow building, which I have.

00:23:02:06 – 00:23:34:27

Jarred Correia

I talked to a lot of. I’m a big process guy, big data person. So and data starts with processes in my opinion. So to run a profitable law firm, you have to think about process metrics and how you utilize those not everybody does, so you have to have a process in place to start with. So if you tell an AI tool, Hey, build me an intake process for my law firm, and then you fill that out with some detail, like I’m a personal injury law firm in Atlanta, Georgia, and we’ve been operating for 20 years and we specialize in tracking accidents.

00:23:34:27 – 00:24:03:08

Jarred Correia

Right. Have it. Build that out for you. Now, that’s not gonna be perfect like we talked about before, because this is an assistive technology. You’re going to get maybe 80% of the way there. But I find that a lot of lawyers have trouble like building that out because that’s not their natural skill set. Yeah, there could be any sort of administrative workflow that you could put in there, and it could even be more workflows because if you’re like, Hey, I’m prosecuting this type of case, what should my workflow be?

00:24:03:08 – 00:24:24:25

Jarred Correia

What should my process be? Because you’re not saying I’m processing this particular case for John Doe, and here’s the facts set, so I could do that too. You could do a closing workflow for cases. You could say, Hey, I got an Epson 247 laser printer in my office. What’s my process for putting new toner in? And you can find that to like, that’s a great work.

00:24:24:25 – 00:24:28:10

Jarred Correia

That’s a great use case workflows the other.

00:24:28:13 – 00:24:57:05

Patrick Carver

The just yeah I just if I can interrupt for once they don’t to go for it it’s very that’s I like that because it’s really flexible and it’s not like oh you need to just be doing, you know like a drafting of documents or something like that. And so I find, you know, now anything that, you know, kind of requires or I get to the point where I don’t immediately have, you know, kind of the idea of like what I need to do for the next set of steps, right?

00:24:57:05 – 00:25:20:24

Patrick Carver

And so I would say like something that I think super I think the anti example is extremely good because, you know, you, you kind of know you need a system, you know, or maybe it’s emails to people once they’ve signed up. Right. Or they’re thinking about using your services like you may not be a great copywriter or like know exactly what to say.

00:25:21:00 – 00:25:43:21

Patrick Carver

That’s the perfect time to just go to chapter and say, you know, give it a little context, tell it. Look, I’m you know, I’m like you said, criminal lawyer, etc., your details. I want to write a three email sequence for people who are thinking about our services. We’ve been in business for this long. We you know, you’re kind of just basically giving it like you would give the task to a person, right?

00:25:43:24 – 00:25:54:19

Patrick Carver

And then it’ll come back and like there’s going to be some things you don’t like, but that’s where you can, you know, like you said, it gets you 80% there. And you can do that with anything, anything that is process related.

00:25:54:19 – 00:26:12:15

Jarred Correia

So the idea of building out a drip campaign I think is really smart maneuver there as well. And so you can get as deep as you want into this, like I was talking about, just like build the workflow, show me the steps. But if you’re like, build me a communications set underneath this part of the workflow, you could actually do that as well.

00:26:12:15 – 00:26:41:10

Jarred Correia

And we’re talking about like chat, CBT and tools like that right now. Yeah, there are a lot of like workflow management, project management tools like Notion or Task Aide or Trello that are implementing the AI, and that’s the system is built to generate task flows, but it was previously built to generate those manually. So now you can use the AI in the other segment and this is interesting to me is like not just creating workflows to scratch.

00:26:41:12 – 00:27:07:12

Jarred Correia

AI is really good at like I’ve done these seven things, what’s my next best action? And you can get an answer for that too. All right. Second use case I think is really good for summarizing things. Yeah. So if I have a case that I find and I’m like, I need to put this into a paragraph form for a legal brief, I’m writing, you put the case, you say, summarize it, there’s great for that.

00:27:07:15 – 00:27:28:05

Jarred Correia

You could tell I still I went to law school and yet I still don’t understand the rule against perpetuity. Plop that into chat CBT and then you could. It’s all about prompting right And we talked a little bit about this so you could say it’s fine. The rule against perpetuity is to me like I’m a five year old using blocks and I will do that for you.

00:27:28:08 – 00:27:49:20

Jarred Correia

Yeah. Another related issue on that is I had people use the AI to sort of be like, here’s the legal concept. I’m writing it down like a lawyer. Can you draft this in a way that I could use to explain it to a non lawyer client of mine in this.

00:27:49:23 – 00:27:51:12

Patrick Carver

Dumb judge.

00:27:51:15 – 00:28:22:12

Jarred Correia

Like that? Yeah, like that kind of thing. So like the that type of use case is tremendous. And there’s what’s great about the AI tools is that you can say, act like this or write for this person or use this tone, which is something like if you’re not like we talked about before, if you’re an attorney, you should be using this stuff now so you could get more sophisticated with it so that as the technology becomes more sophisticated itself, you can keep up with that.

00:28:22:15 – 00:28:42:29

Jarred Correia

And one of the ways you can guess fixated with this right now is to say, hey, explain this concept to a client of mine. Here’s that client Avatar, explain it in this way at this education level. And that’s tremendously helpful if you’re trying to close the client, if you have an existing client that you want to explain a concept to that you’re having trouble getting through with, like that kind of stuff is really helpful.

00:28:42:29 – 00:28:52:09

Jarred Correia

So, you know, people are we already talked about the deposition stuff. Maybe you’re using a paid software for that, but like A.I. is great for summaries, so use it for that purpose.

00:28:52:11 – 00:28:58:14

Patrick Carver

Yeah. And the last point I kind of put a button on this portion is, is that a phrase? Put a button on it.

00:28:58:14 – 00:29:04:15

Jarred Correia

Put it, It is now it’ll be on Urban Dictionary in a couple of weeks.

00:29:04:17 – 00:29:27:27

Patrick Carver

We’ll see. I don’t know if I have that pull but put a bow on it I guess is the better better one. No, all that I think works. And then I think the just something I’ve seen from my dad’s practice, you know, like often changing out receptionist assistants, anybody who’s kind of any of you seems to get plucked by bigger firms and stuff like that.

00:29:27:27 – 00:29:47:15

Patrick Carver

And so I think, you know, instead of just kind of dumping like the kind of sales or follow up on your, you know, on your assistant expecting them to be great at it when they have no formal training, you don’t even really know what kind of what the right path is. You’re just kind of asking them to figure it out.

00:29:47:18 – 00:30:16:28

Patrick Carver

That’s a perfect implementation of going to church and asking what? What should I do? Right? Somebody has reached out, they’re uncommitted, what should I do? And it’ll tell you like, oh, maybe call once, maybe email, you know, the day of and then, you know, and follow through. And so I like all of that because it can provide this layer of like education and standardization that you may not unless you’re a really good leader and you know, in process oriented, you may not have that.

00:30:16:28 – 00:30:31:21

Patrick Carver

And I think it just ultimately makes a better product coming out of your firm and a more consistent product is what I found and what I really like. So cool. All right, I’ll close that there.

00:30:31:24 – 00:30:34:00

Jarred Correia

I would say one more thing briefly.

00:30:34:02 – 00:30:35:00

Patrick Carver

To make one as.

00:30:35:00 – 00:30:44:24

Jarred Correia

Important for what you were saying, which is I’ve been we’ve been talking about lawyers using AI, right? Like what? My staff and the team associates.

00:30:44:27 – 00:30:45:12

Patrick Carver

Such a know.

00:30:45:12 – 00:31:12:25

Jarred Correia

Hardman. And so what I would say with that is that like you don’t necessarily want people using A.I. willy nilly like however they want to it and so two things. One I would say is it becomes even more important that your staff has a sense of what is confidential data and what is not. And then the other thing is I would probably enact an air usage policy in my law firm if I’m using A.I. at all, and there are templates available for that.

00:31:13:02 – 00:31:17:17

Patrick Carver

So it is going to charge you and say, I want to make a policy.

00:31:17:20 – 00:31:20:24

Jarred Correia

There you go. Perfect.

00:31:20:27 – 00:31:46:08

Patrick Carver

So I would just encourage everybody out there who’s interested in AI to just get a GPT account and just play around, right. And just start, you know, kind of jotting down on a piece of paper, you know, repetitive things you do or anything that, you know, just immediately you don’t have, you know, a kind of a plan for in your mind and just play around with it and see, see what, you know, kind of where it gets you.

00:31:46:10 – 00:32:19:27

Patrick Carver

So really appreciate that. All of that discussion. And now I’m going to transition to kind of end of the year some of the things that lawyers can be doing towards the end of the year and into the first part of the next year to prepare, you know, basically get off on the on the best foot. I kind of have seen this, you know, this situation play out where lawyers are like super busy between now and the end of the year, closing out important matters, trying to close cases, different stuff.

00:32:19:29 – 00:32:27:21

Patrick Carver

And they basically go into hibernation starting and Thanksgiving is what I’ve noticed, which I don’t mind, because then December is a little quiet.

00:32:27:28 – 00:32:30:16

Jarred Correia

You get to go into hibernation to.

00:32:30:18 – 00:32:58:07

Patrick Carver

Go for, you know, Bloody Sunday in January when they’re like, Oh wait, what? I spend all my money on this year and you know, they want to chop marketing out. But so what are a couple of things that, you know, you kind of advise at this time of the year, whether it’s like as part of kind of the end of the year process or just planning for something in like January that they should, you know, run with, you know, or or sprint towards.

00:32:58:09 – 00:33:36:27

Jarred Correia

I yeah, I hate this whole notion of like let’s hibernate for the end of the year because that’s a great time to be planning for 2025. And so two things I would say like if you’re a law firm right now and you’re thinking of doing the big sleep from Thanksgiving until January one, I would be looking at. So first thing I would do, I would review like budget to actual over the course of the last year, and maybe that is from January one to December one, because I, like everybody projects things, but nobody goes back and looks and says, Was I correct in what I was projecting?

00:33:36:29 – 00:33:50:29

Jarred Correia

You may be largely correct, but everybody misses things and projections are always educated guesses. So that’s the first thing I would do. And if that’s something that you’re uncomfortable doing on your own and you have an accountant that you work with Etsy.com to do it for you as well.

00:33:51:06 – 00:33:58:29

Patrick Carver

So you’re just you’re mostly talking about like financial projections, right? Just basically we expected to make this I’m not.

00:33:58:29 – 00:34:23:19

Jarred Correia

Talking about that yet. Just budget now. But but that’s the next thing I want to talk about. So the first thing I would look at is like budget to actual like, what did what did we say we were going to pay out in terms of costs and what are we actually pay now? And then the second thing is, to your point, I’m spending time building revenue projections for 2025, which is a highly beneficial activity that most attorneys don’t engage in.

00:34:23:19 – 00:34:43:04

Jarred Correia

And I’m also looking at like if I did revenue projections last year, how close was I? Did I hit my expectations? Was I wrong on certain things? The reason I like law firms doing revenue projections is that it forces them to do other things. So to be able to make projections about what you’re going to do in the new year, you have to have a rate sheet.

00:34:43:09 – 00:35:03:03

Jarred Correia

So you need to know what you charge or what you’re going to make on specific cases. You have to build a marketing plan because if you try to make more money, get more clients, you have to know how you’re going to do that. You may have to develop metrics to incentivize people to make more money by bringing in more clients to get them to do what they need to do.

00:35:03:08 – 00:35:31:16

Jarred Correia

And sometimes that’s just like, Hey, maybe we need a new workflow so that we can process our cases faster. So this whole notion of figuring out like if I’m going to make 20% more in 2025, how does that functionally happen? That has this massive cascading effect about all the things you should be doing in your locker. So those are two of the activities I would be focusing on in November-December if it were me and I was running your practice.

00:35:31:18 – 00:35:59:20

Patrick Carver

Yeah. How how much time do you think like I think would you allocate to like an activity like that just in terms of creating a forecast. Because I feel like I’ve, you know, in my head when I hear that, I’m like, okay, well, where would I even start? You know? And I mean, I kind of know. I mean, now, you know, because I have gone through it with, you know, accountants and, you know, people like, who love that stuff and specialize in it.

00:35:59:20 – 00:36:13:00

Patrick Carver

But like, what’s a, you know, kind of like practical amount of time that you would you would suggest doing that or how how would you go about that with like with an accountant just kind of ball rolling or at least knock out, you know, kind of one of those?

00:36:13:03 – 00:36:30:11

Jarred Correia

I like to I like people own the process. So I don’t think this is like you hand it over to the accountant. It’s like, All right, whatever you say, buddy. I checked out this thing on my list. I did it right. Even if you’ve never done it before, I might do a first draft on my own. And if it’s not something you do in your practice regularly, I might take it.

00:36:30:11 – 00:36:57:03

Jarred Correia

I might take a retreat day. Right. So I might consider like getting an Airbnb for myself on a Saturday, just hanging out there in the hammock and just working it out and like having like heavy focus time. So this is not I’m going to work on my revenue projections while simultaneously watching something on Netflix or simultaneously responding to emails like really think about it and spend some time on it.

00:36:57:05 – 00:37:15:00

Jarred Correia

And I would probably I would probably take a day to do it. And even if you’re not figuring out what other ramifications spinoff of that immediately, like you are getting the revenue projections down and then you’re trying to think about, okay, what other things do I need to accomplish to actually make this happen? And then you can figure out those other things later.

00:37:15:06 – 00:37:16:17

Jarred Correia

That’s perfectly fine.

00:37:16:19 – 00:37:49:27

Patrick Carver

That makes sense. Okay. I think that’s really helpful. And what is once once you kind of get that squared away, is there anything else that you would kind of you’d want to tackle as you go into 20, 25, maybe even just general, even less process oriented and kind of continuing with our, you know, a little bit of the kind of air discussion we had previously, which was like what maybe or what’s a big trend that you you kind of see?

00:37:49:27 – 00:38:05:21

Patrick Carver

I mean, I think is is a big one. So, I mean, what you say like, yeah, well, I mean, I advise all my clients to spend one hour a month kind of getting to know a guy and like playing around with it, you know, trying to figure things, you know. Yeah, right.

00:38:05:24 – 00:38:36:09

Jarred Correia

It’s interesting. So, like, I don’t I generally don’t do that in terms of like, I don’t have like a program that I run out for everybody per se. Like I’m very much into like trying to take clients where they are and being like, okay, what are your needs for this year? And like in terms of this topic, like, I don’t even think we need to go back to I like the thing I would be thinking about is, you know, do I have any goals or metrics in the firm that I’m using aside from like just based revenue?

00:38:36:16 – 00:38:54:21

Jarred Correia

Like everybody wants to make more money. And if I talk to a lawyer and they’re like, I am like, what’s your goal? They’re like, I want to make more money. I’m like, Well, I’ll tell me something. I don’t know if you want to make more money out of your business. Wow, what an insightful way to address this. But I’m talking about, like, specific goals.

00:38:54:24 – 00:39:16:21

Jarred Correia

So, like, do you have other goals for the firm that can relate back to revenue? And do individuals have goals for the firm as well? Yeah. So this could be okay. We want we’ve done our revenue projections. We want to get five more clients from our website each year. Okay, so what do we need to do to make that happen, to change our website in some way?

00:39:16:25 – 00:39:42:21

Jarred Correia

What are the functional things we’re going to do for that? So that’s a potentially a goal. Okay, We want to increase our revenue by increasing our case volume. So what do we need to do to make us to allow us to move through cases faster? Yeah, we need to get through the dispersed phase quicker. If we’re a personal injury firm, do we need to get somebody from a signing meeting to a design meeting faster if we’re state planning firm?

00:39:42:24 – 00:39:59:19

Jarred Correia

How do we do that? And then who owns that process? Like, is that me, the attorney who’s moving that ball forward? Do I have somebody who’s a paralegal in the firm, who’s a case mover, who’s going to do that for me? And are we tracking that information? Who’s responsible for tracking the information? Who’s responsible for reporting on it?

00:39:59:21 – 00:40:23:15

Jarred Correia

Like, that’s the kind of thing I would focus on. Um, creating universal KPIs for the firm and individual KPIs, because I’ve seen this too. Like, you can’t, you can’t have firm KPIs and, and also no KPIs for individuals because what happens is like everybody’s like, Oh yeah, we had to do that. But I don’t think that was my job because it was not assigned to me.

00:40:23:17 – 00:41:01:28

Jarred Correia

And if it’s nobody, if it’s if nobody’s assigned a job, it doesn’t become everybody’s job, which is what a lot of people think it becomes a nobody’s job. So I’m a big believer in like firm, wide KPIs, individual KPIs. Yeah, if you don’t like the term KPIs, call them metrics. But that’s the other thing I would be developing once I’ve done the revenue projections, once I have a budget, once I have a sense of what my profit is going to be, that that year, once I look at accounts receivable, like let me get the financial stuff done and then put some goals on top of that, like actual discrete goals to move forward.

00:41:02:01 – 00:41:24:27

Patrick Carver

Yeah, and I think the one thing I would just tack on top of that is once you have an idea of what what those are a couple that you want to look at, go ahead and put a recurring calendar event on your calendar, Right? Yes. And so even when we have it on a calendar, it’s still a challenge because maybe we’re putting, you know, kind of like putting out a fire or like, you know, something else kind of demands the attention.

00:41:24:27 – 00:41:35:26

Patrick Carver

And so it’s you know, it’s so easy to set those and then forget them. You know, if you don’t have that kind of locked in time where you you’re forced to with it.

00:41:35:29 – 00:41:38:04

Jarred Correia

Yes. A discipline question for sure.

00:41:38:06 – 00:41:53:11

Patrick Carver

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Very. Do you have 60 to 90 seconds for a lightning round since you you gave me a fun one when I was on your when I was on your show. So yeah.

00:41:53:17 – 00:41:55:15

Jarred Correia

I love Lightning Round. Set me up.

00:41:55:17 – 00:42:13:08

Patrick Carver

Okay, so we’re, we’re now entering the lightning round portion of the podcast with Mr. Djerrkura, so. All right, Number one hard hitter right out of the gate. Who is the bigger legal influencer, Kim Kardashian or Jared Correia?

00:42:13:10 – 00:42:20:17

Jarred Correia

Oh, me, Clearly legal. Yeah. Have I told you about my fragrance? Now? I don’t have fragrance.

00:42:20:19 – 00:42:28:23

Patrick Carver

Be cool. Yeah, she’s doing a lot of like, you know so I don’t know much, but, you know, she’s getting into jail. She’s, you know.

00:42:28:23 – 00:42:37:06

Jarred Correia

I had no idea if Kim Kardashian is actually doing something in the legal space. And she’s absolutely more influential than I am already.

00:42:37:08 – 00:42:46:27

Patrick Carver

You know, she’s actually like getting she’s been a big advocate for like prison reform and, you know, stuff like that. Check it out. All right.

00:42:46:27 – 00:42:48:14

Jarred Correia

So I amend my prior answer.

00:42:48:21 – 00:42:52:15

Patrick Carver

A good redeeming quality, you know, for her. So.

00:42:52:17 – 00:42:53:28

Jarred Correia

Good, good.

00:42:54:00 – 00:42:59:13

Patrick Carver

Okay. What practice area is the biggest pain to deal with?

00:42:59:15 – 00:43:26:14

Jarred Correia

Oh, from a consulting side. Yeah, it’s a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I’m going to throw it. I’m going to say immigration. And because it’s really complex, there’s an absurd amount of forms and it’s sometimes there’s language barriers with clients, sometimes it’s cultural barriers with clients. And there are a lot of ethics complaints in that space.

00:43:26:21 – 00:43:39:01

Jarred Correia

That is a really tough practice area be in. So but and there are a lot of people who are very successful at it and simultaneously it’s like a really tough area to consult and but I enjoy, I like challenge the person.

00:43:39:03 – 00:43:41:25

Patrick Carver

Okay, I go PR, I would say PR Why?

00:43:42:00 – 00:43:42:12

Jarred Correia

That’s fair.

00:43:42:16 – 00:43:54:04

Patrick Carver

That’s fair. They’re all like riverboat gamblers, you know, and like, want to pay like 50,000 bucks and get like 2 million in in payoffs.

00:43:54:07 – 00:43:57:02

Jarred Correia

So that is true. That is true.

00:43:57:04 – 00:44:03:00

Patrick Carver

Okay. Who’s worse, legal marketers or legal consultants?

00:44:03:02 – 00:44:28:28

Jarred Correia

Oh, man, that’s a tough one. I’m going to say legal consultants. I’m going to throw myself in the boat here. I just hate like I mean, I’m not a fan of like the Tony Robbins style of stuff. And I don’t like my mindset, like everybody’s overpromising. It’s just like not in my wheelhouse at all. And I don’t like it.

00:44:29:03 – 00:44:51:04

Jarred Correia

Like everybody’s got like, Oh, you know how many people are like the eight figure law firm? The seven figure law firm? Like to me as somebody who’s been doing this for a long time, my whole posture is like every law firm is different. I said before, a lawyer is special and the practices aren’t necessarily special. But like every lawyer is different, every managing attorney is different.

00:44:51:07 – 00:45:10:00

Jarred Correia

They have different ideas about how they want their practices to run, what they want to achieve. And this whole notion of like, you know, we get your mindset right and you’re going to be a billionaire like that doesn’t actually work for most people. So I like to really dive into like, what is your what are your goals? Let’s try to achieve the specific goals and move forward on those.

00:45:10:00 – 00:45:34:05

Jarred Correia

And I yeah, I’m legal legal consultants. I would say by far like legal marketers yourself, I know a lot of good legal marketers, I would say especially legal marketing firms that focus like marketing firms that focus on law. I generally have a really good experience with those folks. But the consultants are some of the stuff is just nauseating that goes out online.

00:45:34:12 – 00:45:54:00

Patrick Carver

So I don’t know. I may start a branch where I help lawyers rehabilitate after other marketing experiences because that’s about 99% of every conversation I had with the New Prospect is like, Well, let me tell you about how, you know, how these guys did me did me dirty.

00:45:54:00 – 00:45:58:02

Jarred Correia

So maybe we’re just telling on ourselves. They’re.

00:45:58:05 – 00:45:58:15

Patrick Carver

You know.

00:45:58:21 – 00:46:02:17

Jarred Correia

We each picked our own industry.

00:46:02:20 – 00:46:13:08

Patrick Carver

Okay, what’s the biggest scam or kind of red herring that lawyer should steer clear of in this next year?

00:46:13:10 – 00:46:28:09

Jarred Correia

Oh, that’s a good one. Okay, so let’s go back to the I think like, yeah, if you’re getting a pitch and it’s like I going to solve all your problems, you don’t have to work anymore because that’s that’s happening. That’s coming down the pipe here.

00:46:28:11 – 00:46:29:20

Patrick Carver

Automate the whole thing.

00:46:29:22 – 00:46:31:22

Jarred Correia

That’s not a thing.

00:46:31:24 – 00:46:32:12

Patrick Carver

Yeah.

00:46:32:14 – 00:46:53:08

Jarred Correia

And I’ve been telling people this for years, which is like nobody wants to talk about managing their business. Nobody wants to have deep conversations about process management. But that is that is a nonstarter. If you don’t do that, you got to understand and own your processes. You got to understand and own your technology in a real way. And there is no like gift wrap solution.

00:46:53:09 – 00:47:05:26

Jarred Correia

Like it’s very similar to what I was just talking about, which is like, Oh, do these seven things and you’ll make $1,000,000. Like, that’s not how it works. And is the same thing with like these air tools. They’re not a panacea yet.

00:47:05:28 – 00:47:11:09

Patrick Carver

Makes sense. All right. Last question. Who’s going to win the World Series?

00:47:11:12 – 00:47:15:22

Jarred Correia

I was so I picked the Rangers last year. Believe or not.

00:47:15:25 – 00:47:17:15

Patrick Carver

I don’t believe you, but.

00:47:17:18 – 00:47:36:09

Jarred Correia

I saw it on a podcast. I picked the Rangers like three months before the season ended. It’s out there this year. What I am going to say, I’m going to. All right. Phillies are breaking through this year. Okay. So I’m going to say, yep, Phillies.

00:47:36:11 – 00:47:44:01

Patrick Carver

Okay. Well, we’ll check, maybe check back in a few months to see if that’s accurate, but probably not.

00:47:44:01 – 00:47:52:09

Jarred Correia

So let’s do it. Yeah, it’s probably going to be right. No, don’t bet on that. But that’s what I think.

00:47:52:11 – 00:48:12:06

Patrick Carver

Well, all right. I really appreciate your time. I think this was awesome. So really appreciate it. If you happen to be unfamiliar with Jared, I haven’t looked him up through the course of this. Check out Red Cave Legal. What’s the what’s that URL for? For the folks at home?

00:48:12:09 – 00:48:14:24

Jarred Correia

RedCaveLegal.com , Pretty easy.

00:48:14:26 – 00:48:28:00

Patrick Carver

Easy, easy stuff You might see him around it your your state clean Lots of lots of opportunities to see him see my video. So thank you.

00:48:28:02 – 00:48:30:17

Jarred Correia

Thank you, sir. This is a pleasure.

00:48:30:20 – 00:48:31:12

Patrick Carver

I always.